Non Regular Classes
Any licensed or member club that has been approved to hold an agility trial may offer additional optional non-regular classes. The non-regular class must be submitted on a “Non-Regular Agility Class” application and approved by the AKC. If a non-regular class is one that is not defined in these regulations, a clear and complete description of both the eligibility and performance requirements must appear in the premium list.
This basically allows a club to offer a non-AKC defined class. This can be useful for clubs in areas of the country where they do not fill. It can also be used by clubs to add some variety to the standard AKC trial. A club can design their own or use a game from another organization.
Special event
Clubs may apply for one Special Event Trial per year. A Special Event Trial is where the club proposes a unique mix of regular AKC classes and/or non-regular classes or a unique eligibility criterion. A club may not change the other Regulations pertaining to regular classes including the equipment regulations. Special Event Trials must be open to all breeds including All-American dogs except at specialty events open to one breed. Regular classes offered at Special Event Trials count toward titles. A Special Event Trial counts as one of the 12 events per year a club may offer.
The application for a Special Event trial cannot be done online. An Agility trial paper application along with a “Special Event Agility Trial” application must be submitted no later than eighteen (18) weeks prior to the trial. The Special Event Agility Trial form must be reviewed and approved by the AKC.
This allows for a lot of flexibility in designing a special trial format. Here are premiums for a couple of upcoming special events:
Carolina Piedmont Agility New Years , 2nd Annual Masters Agility Championship At Westminster
Some time in the future, this could be used for regional qualifying events for the NAC for dogs that do not regularly compete in AKC and would have difficulty in meeting the required points/Q’s/QQ requirement (or a hot young dog that has not had the time to meet the requirements).
What about DACOF? Could it be an AKC special event so we could earn legs? I am not a DACOF expert but I can see several problems that would need to be resolved:
- Two AKC clubs with available trial days would need to “sponsor” a day of the trials. This is because a club can only host one special event.
- Since the “Standard” class does not have a table to save time this would be non-regular class so you could not earn a QQ. You could conceivably earn JWW, FAST and T2B legs.
- Since there is a three month gap between the title cutoff and the event, Novice & Open dogs would not be able to move to a higher level at an AKC trial from after the title cutoff date until after DACOF. One possible option is for DACOF to selectively report the results to AKC. If a dogs current AKC level does not match the DACOF competition level, the results would not be reported to AKC. A similar problem would exist for dogs qualifying for a higher level from an organization other than AKC and the dog is at a lower AKC level.
- There are going to be numerous other issues that would have to be resolved.
- I would dread coming up with a premium to describe the event.
- Would it be worth the effort for a couple of Q’s? My guess - NO